


and in this world of yes, live all worlds .

by diaghileafs



Category: The Hour
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:06:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaghileafs/pseuds/diaghileafs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freddie Lyon is an honourable man and Lix is mourning. They were never looking for it; solace in each other’s mouths, rewriting love poems on their tangled bodies, but they’re forgetting, and they’re getting rather good at it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and in this world of yes, live all worlds .

Freddie Lyon is an honourable man and Lix is mourning.

They were never looking for it; solace in each other’s mouths, rewriting love poems on their tangled bodies, but they’re forgetting, and they’re getting rather good at it.

Bel doesn’t start at every knock on her door with the stick lock which she’ll never fix now out of spite because he doesn’t come round now, he goes home to Camille instead.

Lix is an enigma of Chanel drenched cotton and chapped lips, who doesn’t talk anymore.

______

They never speak of it – the façade of grey grief clouding Lix’s face – they communicate in a morse code of kisses and tumblers of whiskey. Bel falls asleep to a lullaby of typewriter keys and French radio humming on the longwave, to wake in the wee hours, listening to sobs coming from the bathroom. She just pulls back the covers on Lix’s side of the bed and rolls over because it’s the type of cry she knows all too well; young girls losing their first love, realising they can’t remember how they felt before.

She knows more than the other woman would like her to, it’s not difficult; Mr Brown’s increasing apathy as to the running order of the show, the absence of his omnipresent figure fiddling with noticeboards and slumped in doorway. Bel’s almost relieved to see him now.

He ignores Lix and never argues with her pieces. Their eyes have a way of wandering around each other without actually meeting. Sometimes he locks himself in his office and Lix looks on edge, tells Bel that there’s a call coming in from a far flung part of the earth and she gets home late – sleeps on the sofa and won’t let Bel touch her.

______

Lix always kisses her first - lightly on the cheek or on her mouth like a mother wishing their child goodnight, never like a lover, that’s Bel’s role and that’s the problem. They make love when Lix is drunk enough to be compliant and happy, so it isn’t really love at all, and Lix isn’t really Lix; she’s a skeleton with whiskey flowing through her veins, who mutters endearments and laughs out of the blue.

The lights are always off, limbs and lips seeking one another in the blue darkness. Pretending easier that way, without thinking, only wanting mindless pleasure.

But Bel finds herself thinking at times, when her love in silent above her and she can taste her sweetness on her tongue because when one long leg slides up her back and she shakes, Bel knows she isn’t shaking for her.

______

Camille falls pregnant a year after Freddie’s incident and Bel tells herself she feels nothing. She can’t, Freddie was never hers, she doesn’t wear his ring and yet… _and yet, and yet and yet._ A part of her feels disjointed, out of place because she doesn’t love him anymore.

When she informs Lix of the happy news one night at the office with the couple in question lingering at Freddie’s desk as he’s finishing up for the week, Lix looks at her until she repeats the statement more obviously, and then glances sharply across at Camille and drops her teacup, letting liquid gold seep out of the cracked china and pool onto the lino.

Later that evening, Lix folds her body into Bel’s and shows her sunkissed photographs of a baby girl, corners curling with age.

She doesn’t explain who she is, Bel doesn’t ask.

______

Not long after that, she tells Lix she’s cold. They don’t argue, negative space of truths hangs like curtain between them. Bel asks Lix if she loves her.

Lix says she’s sorry, and leaves the flat.

The younger woman cleans up her crystalised heart from the tiled floor.

______

In the morning, she places a note stuck under Lix’s telephone, bands of milky March light obscuring the careless cursive.

She doesn’t look back after that.

_Casablanca. Come with me._


End file.
